Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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420. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if payments from the HSE in the form of compensation court awards from claims of abuse or negligence can affect a person's right to disability allowance or if it can be calculated as income for a means test; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [42018/20]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Social welfare legislation provides for the manner in which a person's means are assessed for social assistance schemes.  In summary, any income or capital, with certain exceptions and disregards, belonging to the person and his / her spouse, partner or co-habitant is assessable for social welfare means testing purposes.

Social welfare legislation provides for the disregard of certain compensation awards when assessing the means of a person.  These disregards include, for example, all income derived from compensation awarded by the Hepatitis C and HIV Compensation Tribunal, the Residential Institutions Redress Board and in relation to disability caused by Thalidomide.  Any payment made by the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Board is also disregarded for social welfare means test purposes.  In addition, ex gratia payments made to women who were admitted to and worked in the Magdalen Laundries, or through the Symphysiotomy Payment Scheme, or payments made by the Minister of Health in accordance with recommendations proposed by the Scoping Inquiry into the CervicalCheck Screening Programme are also disregarded.

All compensation or court awards which are not specifically provided for in social welfare legislation are assessed in the normal manner.  However, most social assistance schemes (such as Jobseeker's Allowance and State Pension Non-Contributory) have a capital disregard of €20,000.  In the case of Disability Allowance, the first €50,000 in capital is disregarded.

Any changes to the means assessment of social assistance schemes would have to be considered in the overall policy and budgetary context.